ON Saturday Gurdy brought down three young men who hadn’t met Margot. He busily noted the chemistry of passion as two of his friends became maniacal by Sunday morning. Against the worn composure of Lady Ilden, the girl had the value of a gem on dim velvet. The third young man wanted to talk Irish politics to the Englishwoman who evaded him and retired to write a letter in her bedroom above the lawn. She wrote to her husband at Malta: “I had always thought that Margot’s success in London was due to her exotic quality. But she seems quite as successful on her native heath. This leads me to the general platitude that boys are the same the world over. I am a success here, too. Many callers, mostly female, in huge motor cars. The American woman seems to consider frocks a substitute for manners and conversation. Mark is anxious that Margot should marry Gurdy Bernamer and Gurdy is plainly willing. It would be suitable enough. The boy has smart friends[193] and will inherit ￡10,000 from old Mr. Carlson. Margot can float herself in local society no doubt. She is now playing tennis with two young brokers and a 22 year old journalist whose father owns half of some State. I have mailed you a strange work, ‘Jurgen’ by some unheard of person. Do not let any of the more moral midshipmen read it.” She stopped, seeing Gurdy saunter across the lawn toward the beach and pursued him to where he curled on the sand. “You frighten me,” she said, taking her eyes from the scar that showed its upper reach above his bathshirt, “you lie about two thirds naked in this sun and then tell me it’s a cool day.—But I want to be documented in American fiction. I’ve read five novels since Wednesday. It seems to be established that all your millionaires are conscious villains and all your poor are martyrs except a select group known as gangsters. That’s thrilling when the reviewers so loudly insist that your authors flatter the rich.”
“Some of them do,” Gurdy said, lifting his legs in the hot air.
In a bathsuit he lost his civilized seeming, was heroic, sprawled on the sand. Olive told him: “You’re one of those victims of modernity, old son. You belong to thirteen forty. Green tights and a dark tunic trimmed with white fur. Legs are legs, aren’t they?”
[194]“Heredity’s funny,” he said, “I look exactly like my father.”
“Margot’s Uncle Eddie? She talks of him a good deal and of your mother. I was rather afraid her metropolitan airs and graces would shock your people but she seems to have had a jolly time down there—New Jersey’s down from here, isn’t it? She enjoyed herself.—Metropolitan airs and graces!—That’s a quotation from something. Sounds like the Manchester Guardian.—Should I like your people?”
“You might. Grandfather’s an atheist. Dad’s a good deal of a cynic. They’re awfully nice small town people. My sisters all wish they were movie stars and my kid brothers think that a fighting marine is the greatest work of God.”
“And Margot says they all think you’re the last and best incarnation of Siegfried. I should like to see them.”
Gurdy shuddered. Grandfather Walling and Mrs. Bernamer held Lady Ilden responsible for the ruin of Margot as a relative. He imagined her artifice and her ease faced by the horrified family—a group of frightened colts stumbling off from a strange farmhand. He poured sand over his arm and lied, “You’d scare them. Mark’s always talked about you as though you were the Encyclop?dia Brittanica on two legs. You might be interested, though.—I say, Mark’s[195] decided that he will produce ‘Todgers Intrudes.’ Thinks he’ll have Cosmo Rand play the Earl. Can Rand really act?”
“Oh,—well enough for that sort of tosh. He’s handsome and he has a pleasant voice. But it’s rather silly of Mark to force such a poor play on the public because Margot wants Ronny Dufford out of debt. But he’s so intoxicated with Margot just now that he’d do murders for her. Why didn’t he come down for the week-end?”
Gurdy got up and yawned, “Oh, his treasurer’s wife ran off with a man last Wednesday—while he was down here. He’s trying to patch it up.—You know, he isn’t at all cynical, Lady Ilden. He’s very easily upset by things like that.”
“I suppose he likes his treasurer? Then why shouldn’t he be upset? The treasurer can’t be enjoying the affair.—I wonder if you appreciate Mark’s noble strain, Gurdy? I think I must send you a copy of the letter he wrote me after he’d packed you off to school. I showed it to my husband who has all the susceptibility of the Nelson monument and he almost shed tears. It took something more than mere snobbery or a desire for your future gratitude to make Mark send you away. It horribly hurt him. If paternal affection’s a disease the man’s a walking hospital!—There’s the luncheon bell.”
[196]Gurdy ran into the water and furiously swam. Unless Lady Ilden was making amiable phrases Margot had lied to her about the family at Fayettesville. It was natural that she should tell Mark how she’d enjoyed the farm. That was prudent kindness, no worse than his own gratitudes when Mark gave him sapphire scarf-pins and fresh silver cigarette cases that he didn’t need or want. But Margot shouldn’t lie to Lady Ilden. Gurdy avoided the next week-end and went to Fayettesville where his family worried because Mark was losing money through the actors’ strike.
“And he’ll need all he can lay hands on with Margot to look after,” said Mrs. Bernamer, rocking her weight in a chair on the veranda, “It ain’t sensible for him to—to bow down and worship that child like he does. Oh, she’s pretty enough!”
“Get out,” Bernamer commented, “He’d be foolish about her if she’d got to wear spectacles and was bowlegged. Gimme a cigarette, Gurd. How near’s the Walling finished?”
“Two thirds, Dad.—Grandfather, you’ll have to come up and sit in a box the opening night.”
The beautiful old man blinked and drawled, “I wouldn’t go up to N’York to see Daniel Bandmann play ‘Hamlet’—if he was alive. How’s old Mr. Carlson get on?”
[197]Gurdy often found the contrast between his grandfather and Carlson diverting. The dying manager, a cynic, wanted Heaven in all the decorations of the Apocalypse. The old peasant lazily insisted that death would end him. He got some hidden pleasure from the thought of utter passage. Gurdy found this content stupendous. The farmer had never been two hundred miles from his dull acreage and yet was ready to be done with his known universe while Carlson wanted eternity. He cackled when the striking actors made peace and ordered wreaths sent to the more stubborn managers. His bitter tongue rattled.
“Why don’t more writers write for the theatre, Gurdy? Ever been in Billy Loeffler’s office? Five thousand bootlickers and hussies squatted all over the place. I sent that fellow Moody that wrote the ‘Great Divide’ to see Loeffler. Had to set in the office with a bunch of song carpenters from tin pan alley and a couple of tarts while Loeffler was prob’ly talkin’ to some old souse he’d knew in Salt Lake City. And then Loeffler looks at the play and asks is there a soobrette part in it for some tomtit his brother was keepin’! A writer’s got a thin skin, ain’t he? Here Mark gets mad because this writer Mencken says managers are a bunch of hogs. Well, ain’t they? Four or five ain’t. Sure, they’re hogs. Human[198] beings. Hogs. Same as the rest of mankind. Good thing Christ died to save us.” He contemplated redemption through the cigarette smoke. His Irish nurse crossed herself in a corner. Carlson went on, “Say, that feller Russell Mark’s got drillin’ that English comedy is all right. Was in to see me, yesterday. Good head. Knows his job. Says this Rand pinhead is raisin’ Cain at rehearsals. Better drop in there and see what goes on. Mark’s so busy with that Cuban play he ain’t got time.”
Rehearsals of “Todgers Intrudes” went on at a small theatre below Forty Second Street. Gurdy drifted into the warm place and watched the director, Russell, working. On the bare stage five people progressed from point to point of the tepid comedy. Russell, a stooped, bald man of thirty-five, sat near the orchestra pit. Gurdy had watched the rehearsal ten minutes before Russell spoke. “Don’t cross, there, Miss Marryatt. Stand still.” Then, “still, please, Mr. Rand.” On the stage Cosmo Rand gave the director a stare, shrugged and strolled toward the cockney comedian, the intrusive Todgers of the plot. Russell said nothing until a long speech finished, then, “You’re all rushing about like cooties. Go back to Miss Marryatt’s entrance and take all your lines just as you stand after she’s sat down. Dora isn’t pronounced Durrer, Mr. Hughes.”[199] Gurdy was thinking of the long patience needed in this trade when Russell spoke sharply, “Mr. Rand, will you please stand still!”
“My God,” said Rand, “must I keep telling you that I played this part in—”
“Will you be so good as to stand still?”
Rand continued his lines. Gurdy walked down and slipped into a chair beside the director, aware that the players stiffened as soon as they saw Mark’s nephew. The handsome Miss Marryatt began to act. Cosmo Rand sent out his speeches with a pleasant briskness. Russell murmured, “Glad you happened in, Bernamer. This was getting beyond me. School children,” and the act ended.
“Three o’clock, please,” said the director. The small company trickled out of the theatre. Russell lit his pipe and stretched, grinning. “Rand’s very capable and a nice fellow enough but he’s difficult. Fine looking, isn’t he? Come to lunch with me.”
It was startling to be taken into an engineer’s club for the meal. Russell explained, “I was an engineer. It’s not so different from stage directing. You sometimes get very much the same material. I’ve often wanted some dynamite or a pickax at rehearsals. Nice that you floated in just now. I’ve a curiosity about this piece. Does Mr. Walling see money in it? I don’t.”
[200]“He thinks it may go,” said Gurdy.
“It won’t. It’s sewed up in a crape. If you had a young John Drew and a couple of raving beauties playing it might run six weeks. And Dufford hasn’t any standing among the cerebrals. We might try to brighten the thing with some references to the Nourritures Terrestres or Freud. It’s a moron. Prenatal influence. Mr. Walling tells me we’re to open in Washington, too. My jinx! I went down there to offer up my life for the country and got stuck in the Q.M.C. supervising crates of tomatoes. Did you ever argue with a wholesale grocer about crates? It’s worse than staging a revue.”
“That’s a dreadful thing to say!”
Russell broke a roll in his pointed fingers and shook his head. “No.... The revue’s a very high form of comedy when it’s handled right. It gets clean away with common sense, for one thing. And it hasn’t a plot. I hate plots unless they’re good plots. That’s why this miserable ‘Todgers’ thing affects me so badly. I hoped Mr. Walling would let me help him with ‘Captain Salvador.’ But it’s his baby.”
“Is Rand giving you as much trouble as that every day?”
“Trouble? My dear man, you’ve never rehearsed a woman star who had ideas about her art! Rand’s merely rather annoying, not troublesome.[201] He’s got no brains so his idea is to imitate the man who played the part in London. And he’s never learned how to show all his looks, either. But very few Americans know how.”
Gurdy liked the director and spent several afternoons at the rehearsals. Cosmo Rand fretted him. The slight man was obdurate. He raced about the stage until Russell checked him. His legs, sheathed always in grey tweed, seemed fluid. The leading woman had an attack of tonsilitis and halted proceedings. It was during this lapse that Gurdy encountered Cosmo Rand in a hotel lounge and nodded. The actor stopped him, deferentially, “I say, I’m afraid poor Russell’s sick to death of me. I’m giving him a bit of trouble.” Gurdy found no answer. The actor fooled with his grey hat, rubbed his vivid nails on a cuff, corrected his moustache and said, “The fact is—I do most sincerely think that Russell’s wrong to drop all the English stage directions. Couldn’t you—suggest that Mr. Walling drop in to watch sometime when Miss Marryatt’s better and we’re rehearsing again?”
His soft, round bronze eyes were anxious. He spoke timidly, the rosy fingernails in a row on his lower lip. He was something frail and graceful, a figure from a journal of fashions. Gurdy wondered whether Cora Boyle ever assaulted her poor mate and smiled.
[202]“Mr. Walling has a good deal of confidence in Russell’s judgment, Mr. Rand. But I’ll speak to him if you like.”
“I’d be most awf’ly grateful if you would, Mr. Bernamer. The play’s such a jolly thing and one would like to see it do well. Ronny Dufford’s rather a dear friend and—so very broke, you know?”
The rosy, trim creature seemed truly worried. Meeting Russell at the 45th Street office the next day, Gurdy told him that Rand’s heart was breaking. The director grimaced, patting his bald forehead.
“The little tyke’s worrying for fear he won’t get good notices. And if this rubbish should fluke into a success he’ll be made into a star. Have you ever observed the passion of the American public for second rate acting? Especially if it happens to have a slight foreign accent? Modjeska, Bandmann, Nazimova?—Well, Miss Marryatt’s all right again. We’ll rehearse some more tomorrow. Come and look on.”
Mark had gone to Fayettesville for a few days. Gurdy attended the morning rehearsal of “Todgers Intrudes.” Cosmo Rand trotted about the stage determinedly and Russell turned on Gurdy with a groan of, “This is beyond me. I’m getting ready to do murder. He’s throwing the[203] whole thing out of key. I shall have to get your uncle to s............